Zero Carbon House, Birmingham UK

Some of the notes posted all around the house on the Open Day, 28 March 2010

• We’re reusing champagne corks as sink plugs! They fit perfectly.
• We dry washing on a clothes rack in winter, on the washing line in summer – so no need for a tumble drier.  Shaking out straight from the washing machine means we don’t usually need to iron.
• We use cloth dishcloths and cleaning cloths, boiling them occasionally with some washing powder to sterilise them.
• Minimal cleaning materials: a few drops of tea tree oil in water as antiseptic spray cleaner, eco toilet cleaner, spit and newspaper to clean the glass of the wood stove and the windows.
• The washing machine has a 15min cycle available, using minimal water and power.
• We reuse elastic bands dropped by the postman, twist fasteners, string, paper clips, and plastic bags.
• We are temporarily reusing our fortnightly veg delivery boxes as drawers until we build shelves under the kitchen worktops.
• We have no freezer, just a fridge icebox. Freezers use considerable electricity as they are on the whole time. As we have plenty of local shops we buy/cook fresh and it is easy to empty and defrost the fridge when we are away on holiday.
• We wash and reuse plastic containers and glass jars for food storage and saving food leftovers to use as basis for next meal.
• We recycle or reuse all paper and cardboard, plastics, aluminium, compost, metal for the “any old iron” man. We aim to send maximum half a black bin bag of rubbish to the Tysley incinerator per week.
• We have plentiful wood from the ash tree for the wood stove, and use a bow saw to cut it to size. One log basket full of ash tree logs heats the hot water store from 20 to 40 degrees centigrade, enough for one bath (or 4 showers) and washing up for 2-3 days. Toilet roll middles make excellent firelighters.
• We feed the birds and have robins, blue tits, great tits, sparrows, gold finches, green finches, chaffinches and squirrels who come to the bird feeder. Blackbirds, pigeons and magpies feed on the ground. In March we had a fox visit the garden. We plan to build a pond to encourage species diversity in the garden.
• We have inherited apple, pear and plum trees in the garden planted by Gwen the former owner of 103, also redcurrants, blackcurrants, raspberries, strawberries and gooseberries.
• We do not have an automatic dishwasher machine but take it in turns to wash the dishes ourselves. This is just something we have always done and it saves electricity.
• We turn off mobile phone chargers etc at the wall when not in use, rather than leaving it on “stand-by” which can use a surprising amount of power.
• Many of our toys and books are from local Moseley and King’s Heath charity shops and inherited from cousins and friends. We try to choose toys that are wind up (rather than battery driven) and wooden (rather than plastic).
• We have discovered that sweeping the floors and shaking the rugs is more effective and more energy efficient than using a vacuum cleaner.

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